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Presentation on theme: "(1890-1976) Name at birth: Agatha May Clarissa Miller."— Presentation transcript:

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V ery prolific British author of mystery novels and short stories, creator of Hercule Poirot, the Belgian detective, and Miss Jane Marple. Christie wrote more than 70 detective novels under the surname of her first husband, Colonel Archibald Christie. She also published a series of romances and a children's book. Agatha Christie was born in Torquay, in the county of Devon. Her father died when she was a child. Christie was educated home, where her mother encouraged her to write from very early age. At sixteen she was sent to school in Paris, where she studied singing and piano.

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Christie was educated home, where her mother encouraged her to write from very early age. At sixteen she was sent to school in Paris, where she studied singing and piano. Christie was an accomplished pianist but her stage fright and shyness prevented her from pursuing a career in music. When Christie's mother took her to Cairo for a winter, she wrote there a novel She devoted herself into writing and had short stories published.

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In 1914 Christie married Archibald Christie, an officer in the Flying Royal Corps. Their daughter, Rosalind, was born in 1919. During World War I she worked in a Red Cross Hospital in Torquayas a hospital dispenser, which gave her a knowledge of poisons. It was to be useful when she started writing mysteries. The Christies bought a house and named it 'Styles' after the first novel. Christie was an accomplished pianist but her stage fright and shyness prevented her from pursuing a career in music.

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In 56 years Christie wrote 66 detective novels. Christie's marriage broke up in 1926. Archie Christie, who worked in the City In the same year Christie's beloved mother died. After hearing that her husband had left for Miss Neele's house, Christie disappeared for a time. During WW II Christie worked in the dispensary of University College Hospital in London.

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In her autobiography, Agatha Christie admits to never really having a place or room which was specifically to write in. All she said she needed was a steady table and a typewriter, quite often just the dining room table. She says that there was always a terrible three or four weeks which had to be got through when she first started to write a book.

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In her autobiography, she says there is no agony like it: such misery and despair, such inability to do anything in the least creative – a feeling of paralysed hopelessness. Then suddenly, she found she would begin to function again, know that it was coming and that the mist was clearing. Agatha Christie talks about how strange it feels to have a book growing inside you, building up all the time. she said that she never found any difficulty writing during the war

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Agatha Christie believed that economy of wording was particularly important in detective stories. The reader did not want to heard the same thing repeated three or four times. She uses very simple everyday language. Repeats it, rather than trying to introduce new words and phrases. She also relies heavily on dialogue throughout her books.

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The solution often depends upon the readers interpretation. But she prevent to this to keep her dialogue very simple and straightforward. The simplicity of the language is one of the key points raised in the debate regarding The Agatha Christie Code, an ITV documentary backed by research undertaken by a number of universities. The research team also analysed each of Christie's books for its word length, frequency and sentence structure. They found that all of her books are very similar in style, using the same number of letters in a word on average, and approximately same number of words in a sentence.

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The first part of the novel (a little over a third) is an effective psychological thriller as the family and the victim are introduced, principally through the perspective of Sarah King and Dr. Gerard, who discuss the behaviour of the family. Mrs. Boynton is sadistic and domineering, traits that (it is suggested) may have influenced her choice of original profession: prison warden. Sarah is attracted to Raymond Boynton, while Jefferson Cope admits to wanting to take Nadine Boynton away from her husband, Lennox Boynton, and the influence of her mother-in-law. Having been thwarted in her desire to free the young Boyntons, Sarah confronts Mrs. Boynton whose apparent reply is a strange threat: "Ive never forgotten anything – not an action, not a name, not a face." When the party reaches Petra, Mrs. Boynton uncharacteristically sends her family away from her for a period. Later, she is found dead with a needle puncture in her wrist.Petra

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Poirot claims that he can solve the mystery within twenty-four hours simply by interviewing the suspects. During these interviews he establishes a timeline that seems impossible: Sarah King places the time of death considerably before the times at which various of the family members claim last to have seen the victim alive. Attention is focused on a hypodermic syringe that has seemingly been stolen from Dr. Gerards tent and later replaced. The poison administered to the victim is believed to be digitoxin: something that she already took medicinally.digitoxin During a protracted denouement, Poirot explains how each member of the family has, in turn, discovered Mrs. Boynton to be dead and, suspecting another family member, failed to report the fact. In reality, none of the family would have needed to murder the victim with a hypodermic, since an overdose could much more effectively have been administered in her medicine. This places the suspicion on one of the outsiders.denouement

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The murderess is revealed to be Lady Westholme who, previous to her marriage, had been incarcerated in the prison in which the victim was once a warden. It was to Lady Westholme, and not to Sarah, that Mrs. Boynton had addressed that peculiar threat; the temptation to acquire a new subject to torture had been too great for her to resist. Disguised as an Arab servant she had committed the murder and then relied upon the suggestibility of Miss Pierce to lay two pieces of misdirection that had concealed her role in the murder. Lady Westholme, eavesdropping in an adjoining room, overhears that her criminal history is about to be revealed to the world and commits suicide. The family, free at last, take up happier lives: Sarah marries Raymond; Carol marries Jefferson; and Ginevra takes up a successful career as a stage actress - she also marries Dr. Gerard.